Imperial Ottoman

Economy · Article

The Ottoman Coffee Trade

The arrival of coffee from Yemen in the sixteenth century, the trade route through the Red Sea, taxation, the rise of the coffeehouse, and 17th-century banning attempts.

Coffee was the most distinctive of all the consumer goods introduced into the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century, and the Ottoman coffee trade became one of the most important sectors of the late sixteenth and seventeenth century economy. The bean, originally consumed in Ethiopia and Yemen, was carried through the Red Sea and Egypt to Istanbul, where it was roasted, sold in licensed coffeehouses, and taxed by the imperial treasury. Coffee was also a social and cultural phenomenon: the coffeehouse was a new kind of public space, and it became one of the defining institutions of Ottoman urban life. The trade is an important part of the broader history of the Ottoman economy and trade.

Origins and arrival

The coffee plant (Coffea arabica) was originally cultivated in Ethiopia, and it had been used in the Yemen since at least the fifteenth century. By the early sixteenth century the port of Mocha, on the Red Sea coast of the Yemen, was the principal export point for the bean, and the cultivation was concentrated in the highlands of the Yemen, particularly around the town of Haraz. The Ottomans, who had conquered the Yemen under Selim I and Suleiman, took over the administration of this trade.

The exact date of coffee’s arrival in Istanbul is uncertain, but by the 1550s it was being consumed in the imperial palace and the households of the wealthy. Two stories of its introduction are common. One credits the introduction to Özdemir Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Yemen, who brought the bean to Istanbul in the early 1550s. The other credits the introduction to Şems of Aleppo and Hekim of Damascus, two merchants who opened the first commercial coffeehouses. The two stories are not mutually exclusive, and they probably reflect the gradual introduction of the drink over a period of years.

The trade route and the Yemen

The coffee trade was organized around the port of Mocha, where the bean was loaded on ships sailing up the Red Sea to Suez. From Suez the coffee was carried overland to Cairo and then to Alexandria, where it was loaded on the great Mediterranean galleys and ships. Some of the coffee went to Istanbul, some to the Levantine ports, and some was re-exported to Venice, Marseille, and other European markets. The Ottoman state collected customs duties at Suez, Cairo, and Alexandria, and the Yemeni administration collected taxes on the production and export of the bean.

The Yemen was a difficult province to govern, and the Ottoman control of the coffee-producing region was contested by the Zaydi imams of the highlands and by the local tribes. The Ottomans, who depended on the revenue from the coffee trade, periodically dispatched military expeditions to the highlands and tried to assert direct control over the production. The attempt was only partly successful, and the Yemen remained a costly province for the Ottoman treasury throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The first coffeehouses

The first coffeehouse in Istanbul is traditionally dated to 1554, opened in the Tahtakale district by two merchants, one from Damascus and one from Aleppo. The new institution spread rapidly, and within a few decades there were several thousand coffeehouses in the city. The Ottoman chronicler Peçevi, writing in the mid-seventeenth century, noted that the coffeehouses had become the most important centers of public sociability in the city, and that the chief complaint against them was that they had displaced the mosques as places of assembly.

The coffeehouses were more than drinking establishments. They were public forums, where news, gossip, and political opinion were exchanged, where students and scholars met to discuss, where merchants conducted business, and where entertainers performed. The coffeehouse was also a place of relatively informal social mixing, in which Muslims, Christians, and Jews could meet on more equal terms than in other public settings. The state was simultaneously pleased by the revenue that the coffeehouses produced and alarmed by the political discussion that took place in them.

Taxation and revenue

Coffee was heavily taxed. The state collected a customs duty at Suez and at Istanbul, and the coffeehouses themselves paid a yearly tax for their license. The revenue was substantial: in the early seventeenth century, coffee customs provided a significant share of the customs revenue of the capital. The chronic shortage of silver in the empire, a recurring problem in the Ottoman economy and trade, was partly addressed by the inflow of specie paid for coffee and other goods, and the state had a strong interest in keeping the trade open.

The price of coffee was correspondingly high, and the consumption was initially confined to the wealthier classes. By the seventeenth century, however, coffee had spread to the middle and even to the lower classes, and the coffeehouse was a mass institution. The drink was prepared in a number of ways, of which the most common were the plain black coffee (sade kahve) and the sugared coffee (şekerli kahve), and it was served in small cups, often with a glass of water and a piece of sweet.

Banning attempts

The political fears that the coffeehouses generated were addressed by the state through a series of banning attempts. The most famous is the prohibition of 1633, in the reign of Murad IV, which closed the coffeehouses of Istanbul and made the consumption of coffee and tobacco a capital offense. The prohibition was enforced with great severity, and the chronicler of the period recorded the executions of several coffeehouse keepers. The ban was eventually relaxed, in part because the state could not afford to forgo the revenue, and in part because the political tensions of the period eased.

A second attempt, in 1653, was more modest: the state imposed a heavy tax on the coffeehouses but did not close them. The tax produced substantial revenue, and the coffeehouses continued to operate. By the eighteenth century the banning attempts had been abandoned, and the coffeehouse was firmly established as a feature of Ottoman urban life. The state continued to tax the trade, and the consumption of coffee continued to grow, and the Ottoman coffee trade became a normal sector of the imperial economy.

Conclusion

The Ottoman coffee trade is a small but revealing chapter in the broader history of the Ottoman economy. The bean came from the Yemen, was carried through the Red Sea, taxed in Suez, roasted in Istanbul, and sold in the thousands of coffeehouses that had become, by the seventeenth century, a defining institution of Ottoman urban life. The trade produced substantial revenue, but it also generated political fears that led to periodic banning attempts. The long history of the coffee trade is also a chapter in the social and cultural history of the empire, for the coffeehouse was a new kind of public space in which the social hierarchies of the older Ottoman city were, for a moment, suspended.